[Edu-sig] Topics for CS2

[kirby urner]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 8:44 AM, David MacQuigg
<macquigg at ece.arizona.edu> wrote:

<< SNIP >>

> I had no idea these little laptops could run Linux.  Cool.
>
> -- Dave

Future tell all journalism needed but there's a lot of RedHat under
the hood, Python too slow for an operating system, an agile, needs an
aquarium to play safe in, with other VHLL friends (high level life
forms... like Squeak, yum).

So yeah, those G1G1 toy-looking toyz are quite the thing to have if
you're a North American, proves you're thinking ahead, some kind of
genius maybe, or at least a blogger of high repute.  You'll notice I
milk mine for all its worth ("mooo" says the little xo), plus now I
have two, thanks to Hong Kong connections.

I nominated OLPC's Negroponte for Math Czar in DC, spoofing this
tendency to have a "czar" for everything, starting with that general
for drugs.  Either him or Richard Stallman, truly innovative spirits,
very remote from the corrupted text book industries and their
fly-by-night traffic in dead trees (shudder), both pure as the driven
snow.

But then I'm really against stupid top-down curriculum regimes, like
in old Europe.  50 states = 50 laboratories, designed to compete, vie
for leadership, not all toe some party line set in some faraway
swamplands (a wonderful city, spent many years there) -- better to
anchor in Anchorage why not?  More fun.  Or Hawaii maybe?

Here's da link:  http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=1889066&tstart=0

My Chicago slides contain pro XO PR, point out that OLPC.xo.pippy
contains Fibonacci's and Pascal's both in its namespace, even if not
in Py3K generator format (OK, so Portland's ahead, what we'd expect
from an open source capital).  A core focus of my talk is the purpose
of "lore", not just as idle banter, but as glue for the technical
stuff, an orthogonal axis.

Here's that graph, consider fixed arrow length as representing an
upper limit on bandwidth (in our human subject):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/3214428790/

(note: "Saxon" refers to this military guy who thought US math
textbooks sucked, created his own, caught on with the home schoolers,
gave 'em an edge on tests, entre to top schools, quite a story, remind
me to say more).

Kirby

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